Chestnuts

I received an e-mail from Miguel in Spain this morning stating that he hopes to finish harvesting castanas (chestnuts) this weekend.







Below is a photgraph of one of the chestnut trees on his finca (farm). Note the chestnuts on the ground.






Miguel's finca is shown in the center of the photograph below.

Here in America we might see and smell the occasional pan of chestnuts roasted during the Christmas holidays by street vendors.In Spain, however, Miguel tells me that he will sort his chestnuts by size and place them in bags. He plans to sell four thousand pounds of chestnuts in his two markets!

I have done a little research to find out who buys these chestnuts and what do they do with them.

I discovered that Spaniards eat the chestnuts in conjunction with festivals, such as La Castanyada which occurs at the same time as our Halloween. La Castanyada means the day of the Chestnut and it is celebrated on All Saints Eve. Along with chestnuts the party goers like to eat panellets, sweet potatoes, and candied fruit and to drink they have cava, a sweet sparkling white wine.

Panellets are small round cakes or cookies made of flour, eggs, sugar, almonds and lemons and decorated with pine nuts, cocoa powder, candied cherries, or coconut.

At schools the children like to decorate the panellets and sing songs.